As a little girl, I have always wanted to walk in my father’s footsteps. He is a volunteer firefighter. I knew one day I would get the chance to be just like him. I am now a volunteer firefighter, and have been for about 2 years now.
I knew I wanted to help people in ways that others couldn’t. Becoming a firefighter was a wise life changing choice I made in my life. I got in on a little later than I would have liked do the birth of my first child.
One day our local fire department got called to a grass fire. It was a pretty good size fire too. My mother and I had to take a cooler of ice cold water out to all the guys. At that point I knew I wanted to get in on the action. I recall telling my mother that I wanted to be out there putting the fire out and saving some of the owners’ property, rather than being on the side of the road handing out water.
I wanted to be one of the ones that saved some land. The following week I had put my application in to join the fire department. The next month I got accepted to join. That was one of the happiest days of my life.
I knew on that day, I was going to be the one to be out fighting fire and saving lives. My first run was not one of my happiest.
It was wreck and the patient was injured pretty badly and he ended not making it. I never thought I would feel the way I felt when the paramedics called his time of death. It was like a feeling of failure had just rushed over me. It was a very sad time for. Just joining the fire department and having the patient on my very first run had not made it. A couple runs after that had not been very good either. It was like I was on a streak of making runs where the patients don’t make it. I had quit making runs for a while after the first 4 went the way they did. I just felt like a total failure.
My father had talked me back into start making the runs again. He told me it was just a coincidence that my first runs had ended like they did and it would get better. He was right. Since then, I think I have had 2 runs like the first few. Others, I had been there to comfort the patient and help them relax. Each run makes you have a mix of feelings. There are no words to describe the feeling you get when you make a difference in someone life at a crazy point in their life.
The last couple years have been amazing being on the fire department. I set a goal as a little girl. That goal was following in my father’s footsteps as being a volunteer firefighter. It has made a major change in my life. I know that was a wise goal to set, to help saves lives.